Our country has been doing a lot of introspection lately about sex crimes in our military, and President Obama is right — it’s time we did the same for our universities. This week, he announced the creation of a special task force to study sexual assault on campus. It has 90 days to come up with solutions, and should start with an obvious one: Get colleges out of the law enforcement business.

Too often, an allegation is kept hush-hush, investigated internally, and nobody ever gets charged. How well sexual assaults are handled varies widely based on the university, and appearances can be deceiving. A costly private school may do a far worse job than a public university.

At a state school like Rutgers, the campus department has full police powers and already is required to report every sex assault allegation to the prosecutor’s office. Yet some private schools have only a basic security staff, and handle all or most of the investigation internally.

Campus cops can’t subpoena documents or do DNA testing — and with a fresh crime scene, any delay could be disastrous. This is amateur hour, and that’s bad for both the accuser and the accused. Then there’s the obvious conflict of interest here: A school preoccupied with its own image isn’t the best authority to handle a serious crime on campus, and a sensitive victim.

Obama’s task force should find ways to put rape back into the hands of outside investigators, where it rightly belongs. For instance, we could require colleges to inform the local prosecutor’s office of every sex assault allegation, just as municipal police must do. Then the prosecutor could decide who handles the investigation.

Even if a victim declines to press charges, this would at least ensure proper police documentation, in case the same suspect gets accused again. It would also send a clear message to schools: Treat rape on campus like the serious felony it is.